


Two-Hundred Kilometers an Hour

by bug_from_space



Series: Requiem for the Dreamer (Poetry) [5]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Circus, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Circus, Demigods, Found Poetry, Gen, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Poetry, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2019-09-02 00:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16776436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bug_from_space/pseuds/bug_from_space
Summary: 'X. The story goes like this: there’s a boy in love with the sun'A collection of everything Icarus I've written, and continue write. Primarily poetry.





	1. Hey Icarus

Hey Icarus, are you still in love?

Not with him.   
In three thousand years you learn  
That to ask for an audience with a god you must be holy  
(I am not holy, I was never holy)

Hey Icarus, do you miss flying?

Always.   
No amount of agony can make me reconsider  
My flight and my freedom   
(my descent was stunning)

Hey Icarus, how many times have you died?

Too many.   
It doesn’t stop being painful  
It just starts being expected   
(shot, burned, drowned; it’s all the same)

Hey Icarus, how many times have you lived?

Not enough.   
Not compared to every time I’ve died  
A few lifetimes in a few millennia  
(there’s more to life than dying)

Hey Icarus, were you afraid?

No.  
There was too much joy to be afraid   
It was better than prison walls  
(too much love for me to be angry)

Hey, Icarus, do you regret it?

Sometimes.   
In moments when I’m broken and bleeding  
And still not dead, but never holy   
(I regret the tragedy, but not the flight)

Hey Icarus, how much do you remember?

Everything.   
Each feather that flew by   
And the crash of waves around me  
(and him, try as I do to forget)


	2. Blasphemous Lullaby

Two tragical boys meet one night

“Got anything that feels like flying?”   
“Just a sunburned heart and memories.”

It’s good enough for them.   
Two boys who aren’t holy   
Who fell for the sun

Their kisses don’t burn like Apollo’s   
(“Do you miss him?”)  
Soft whispers pressed against solid bones   
("I miss flying.")

Old lullabies sung in dead languages  
Follow them to bed   
( "Am I enough?")  
It’s better than the alternative   
three thousand years of silence

Eventually one of them runs   
A lovers embrace replaced   
By cold unyielding granite  
They don’t meet in the next life   
The following one and they’re all the other has  
They don’t talk about the past

Some days one wakes up crying   
Drenched in a sweat that wasn’t caused by heat  
three thousand years and the memories haven’t faded  
The sea beacons Icarus return and Phaethon can only hope  
That he doesn’t, just as Icarus hopes for Phaethon.  
Icarus won’t ride planes over water   
Phaethon hasn’t prayed to his father in millennia

(“you’re everything.”)   
It’s easier some days for them to forget  
The tragedies of every life   
(exploding suns, lifetimes of unanswered orisons to a lover/a father)  
The gods haven't answered prayers in centuries   
Least of all to two sun broken boys  
(this is not a modern retelling, it’s the continuation in modern times)  
(sometimes blasphemous actions just need company).


	3. Midnight Lovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sunlit Lovers Abandon the Sun

Icarus and Phaethon  
Meet on a roof in the middle of the night  
there's no sun tonight  
No wings, no chariots  
And no chance of flame

Phaethon whispers prayers  
To a father long forgotten  
Helios hasn’t answered his son  
In three millenia

Icarus tries to forget his lover  
Burning kisses, blisters from scorching lips  
Apollo isn’t safe to love, has never been  
But three thousand years is not long enough  
When waiting for his burns to heal while his love did not

Phaethon’s lips don’t burn  
Don’t leave scars, don’t sunburn his skin.  
Icarus whispers blasphemy  
Breath warm against solid bones

Phaethon holds Icarus back from jumping  
Soft kisses reminding him of bone density  
Not hollow enough to fly  
He wouldn’t fly, just fall  
But not drown, there’s no water for that

Icarus draws up ideas for wings  
In an old sketchbook  
None are made of wax, instead  
It’s pages of gleaming metal

In the hours before dawn  
Phaethon recites holy words  
For a dying god  
But all the gods are dying now  
Except for the few that are dead

In the early light Icarus closes his notebook  
And abandons the idea of flight  
Phaethon’s prayers turn to whispers  
And eyes trace the rising light

In the light of morning  
They abandon the skyline to the dying gods  
Lovers only in the dark  
When the sun can’t illuminate their tragedies  
Three thousand years worth


	4. Draft number: 801

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unsent texts to Apollo

982 BCE.  
Is it possible to  
Love someone so much  
That you hate them for it?

Broken wings  
Are no longer nightmares  
Should I be thanking you?

It’s been months  
And I can’t help but wonder  
Did you ever love me at all?

A year ago  
I stopped praying to you  
I want to feel guilty for it

200 BCE.  
I am still alive  
Eight hundred years worth  
Of lives and I’m not dead

120 BCE.  
You are still  
Apollo in this new world  
A roman Apollo is strange

500 C. E.  
The gods are  
Dying without their belief  
I wonder how long you have?

I’m in love  
With a god that’s fake according  
To the modern philosophers

The myths don’t  
Mention we ever were lovers  
That my death was your fault

1000 C. E  
I remember your  
Face still but not my father’s  
I forgot my mother's long ago

How long has it  
Been since I fell and drowned  
In the sea far from your loving arms?

1500 C. E  
A new world  
Has been discovered across  
The sea and I wonder how you are?

You were my first  
Exploration into the unknown  
This ship is rather much the same

1692 C. E  
I’ll burn tomorrow  
Called witch by the townsmen  
For my almost prayers to fake gods

1776 C.E  
Independance  
Is a worthy goal to aim for I hope  
They can succeed at their revolution

1780 C.E  
I’ll be dead by  
Morning I imagine but there’s no water  
It’s more painful that way I almost think

1912 C.E  
The unsinkable  
Ship has sunk and many will join  
The legions of dead beneath the sea

1916 C.E  
Another war  
And I shall not live until the morning comes  
I wonder if you are as embroiled in this as I am?

1942 C.E  
Bombs drop  
From airplanes like a thousand exploding suns  
This can’t possibly have been your creation I hope

The sun follows  
Me into every lifetime even now it’s a shame  
That I am fated to fly, I could have been stunning

1996 C. E.  
Legality  
In this common era is a strange thing  
My tragedy is better than this illegal love

2003 C.E  
Three thousand  
Years of loving you and I hate every minute  
I’m a myth in this modern age thanks to you

2010 C.E  
I feel as  
Though loving you has ruined me  
And I think you realize this as well

2016 C.E  
I have  
Found another with whom I share  
My tragedy but yet guilt holds me back

2020 C.E  
In hindsight  
I should have tried to find the other before this  
Loving you were the dreams of a boy I am no longer.


	5. A Mythical Tragedy in Eleven Parts

X. The story goes like this: there’s a boy in love with the sun  
IX. Burning kisses, molten eyes, and scorching skin  
VIII.Fanciful mortal dreams entertained in exchange for worship  
VII.The story goes like this: a boy with wax wings has a timer marking hours

VI. The things in the in-between: the moment of realization, of falling  
V. Wax blazing paths across shoulder blades and world filled with feathers  
IV. A game of he loves me-he loves me not, with falling feathers as petals  
III. Breath stolen by terminal velocity and shouts that the boy doesn’t know who are from  
II.The things in the in-between: the times about to expire and the boy isn’t afraid

I. Cool water soothes burns and breaks bones, remaining feather float away and a timer runs out  
0.The boy is made of mythical tragedy, and the love is forgotten


	6. Two Truths and a Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things are best kept secret

Truth: you are a myth.  
The boy who flew too high  
And had his wings melt  
Before you fell down into the awaiting sea

Another truth: The Gods are dying  
The disbelief sapping their strength  
Until the day they all vanish  
And you will too because what’s a myth without the gods?

The lie: you are no longer in love.  
That the years since your death has stolen your love  
And that you have moved on from your broken wings  
You could never love the one who ended your life


	7. Rebirth

Hades looks at the boy with broken wings for seconds  
A split second of mercy-of cruelty consigning Icarus to life  
Seventeen years worth of memories to avoid the same mistakes

When Icarus wakes up he has burns from a past life  
A lifetime of memories in his head  
And prayers to the Gods get stuck in his throat

The second time Hades meets the boy he’s a little more broken  
And not quite a myth yet for having flown  
And for the second time Hades gives the boy life

The third time Icarus lives he throws himself off short buildings  
And wades into the ocean to learn to swim  
He dies with fractures painting his skin, bones broken beyond support

This time Hades tells the boy who is becoming a legend  
To avoid his mistakes of every former life, to avoid the sun  
And resets a life once more, a merciful-a cruel punishment

Waking up isn’t shocking this time, routine every lifetime by now  
He hears the name Icarus whispered ‘the boy who flew-the boy who fell’  
He’s becoming a legend now, no one left alive to correct misconceptions

When Hades meets Icarus for the fourth time he doesn’t say anything  
Just pushes him back to the living, becoming curious to see him live  
this is the last time Icarus will meet Hades

This life ends almost as soon as it starts  
Not every life lasts and this one ends in fatality  
He doesn’t die so much as wake up somewhere else

Hades curses the boy to a forever to watch his story grow to myth  
And to morph into the unrecognizable before coming back to truth  
The boy wanted to love a god, and now he’ll know what it’s like to be one


	8. Silver and Black Pencil Crayons

A modern Icarus carries around silver and black pencil crayons  
And a sketchbook full of feathers in grayscale  
Sketches of wings with every precaution

Wings he’ll never make because he flew once and died for it  
Has died a hundred times over for it because the memories never left  
Some dreams edge the line between nightmare well

But these wings would carry him  
He likes to think, the gleaming metal and parachutes  
Would stop him from meeting a fate like he had before

These wings would never be intended to touch the sun  
The flaming ball of gases according to modern science  
(they would never be meant to keep pace with Apollo either.)

Metal wings would take him past the atmosphere, and instead  
Would send him into the cosmos,   
a constellation instead of a cautionary tale

And he like his father, would make two pairs  
But not for a son, but for his lover  
Though Apollo’s not his anymore

The other set of wings would adorn the back of Phaethon  
And the tales about falling and foolishness would be rewritten  
To tell of the two boys who flew with wings but without the tragedy

And if the wings failed there would be a parachute  
This time ready to catch him and Phaethon from destruction  
And they could try again because it was a possibility

Strange dreams for the boys who still won’t fly  
Three thousand years later but  
One day silver and black pencil crayons won’t be drawings


	9. The Wicked and Divine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Mortal and an Immortal But Who Knows Which is Which?

You asked me once  
What it was like to be a mortal  
And I laughed and told you  
“Just like this”

And in return you  
Told me what it’s like to be a god  
And the world had seemed  
unbelievably big

And now I am  
Worlds away from when we  
Had that conversation  
And I think neither of us was fully truthful

Because I know what it’s like to be a god  
And you have fallen not quite to mortality  
But closer than either of us will ever be  
And I want to ask is it as good as it seemed?

You’re no longer all power  
But your all seeing eyes know more than me still  
and I think Cassandra is laughing at us  
Because what’s a prophet in a modern era?

And I wanted immortality  
to understand, but these burdens were uniquely  
Our own at the time and it took three thousand  
Years for me to realize

That immortality is not a blessing  
And living forever is not a goal  
To aim for so long as you are the only one  
But I will wake up alive again

And you are on a street corner  
With music pouring from you like  
Blood in a river or is that  
Water in veins, perhaps it’s neither

And I wonder if I’ll outlive you  
Because what’s a myth without the gods  
But instead is it the faith  
In my failure that keeps me alive?


	10. In Amongst the Ashes: Found Poem

A boy with fingers stained with tobacco and spacedust  
Who felt like sunshine  
Who had sunlight jail itself in his bone.  
And his father gave him  
Wings that were a shock of perfection, like bones of bravery.

And he talks to the wind  
As he flies in the forever of falling,  
But he falls  
Squawking and flapping his bony wings  
Into languid waves that whisper indifferently to  
An azure sky that conjoins a turquoise bay  
Shifting from green and blue with every second glance.

And now  
A boy in shades of grey, of wood fire ash  
A wing-wrecked bird  
Seared by centuries of sun  
Has footprints that burn holes in the sand,  
That year he could carry not even his name  
(Icarus, Icarus, Icarus)  
Says he doesn’t want wings, says he want to be a fish now  
But no one hears him

The interpretations of his myth  
Duel like prophets  
Some say he’s a  
Primordial man who  
Melted with his waxen wings’ hubris  
(too volatile they say, too ambitious)  
But others talk about  
How hard it is for a child whose cup was filled with time unfilled  
(dispensation isn’t awarded to tragedies)

Like a figure in a painting  
People question motivation  
Wonder if he died from wanting too much  
Or from finding what he wanted too much.  
They use him as an example of being gilded but not gold

The stars sighed in unison  
When he fell  
And again when he got distorted.  
As time’s revealing gets revolting  
The sound I make is sympathy’s


	11. Imagine If?

Everybody knows the story of Icarus. The boy who flew too close to the sun, and fell into the deep sea below. Wax wings melting, and failing. A warning about flying too high. A cautionary tale about going beyond your capabilities. A tragedy people call it.

What if it wasn’t? What if it was a love story? About a boy who fell in love with the sun even with the knowledge that it would burn. Scorching kisses, and burning skin, and the awareness that there was no way that this could end well. What if he was captivated by the fire of Apollo, or the blaze of Helios’ smile. What if Icarus knew what he was doing?

Imagine if he had been caught though? The arms of the sun catching him in their burning grip before he hit the water. If maybe he hadn’t felt the same cold of the sea swallowing him whole. Brought up high, beyond where even his tatters of wax and feather had brought him. What if he had gotten a little longer in the arms of the brightness before he fell. What if this time he fell, after being discarded by the gods? (The saddest part is this fall never changes.)

Imagine if in another life Icarus was far away from the sea, and the same burning passion of the sun. Instead he has wings made up of corpses, and blood. Rising through military ranks instead of the sky. Believing that there was no way he could fall in the same way; that he was somehow safer. Believing this right up until he paints a target on his back, and someone hits it.

Imagine if in another version Icarus laughs at the teachers who teach his myth as a tragedy. Never once mentioning the fact that he laughed as he plummeted, or the pure elation he felt as he did. With the knowledge that he had flown higher than anyone else dreamed to. A boy who smiled at sunrises, and could skateboard circles around any of his classmates. A boy who fell in love with someone that burned brightly enough to paint everything gold. What if Icarus tumbled headfirst into the fires of a romance he knew would only burn so long. Seeking comfort in the arms of a temporary warmth. Falling so far when he jumped from a roof after the sun left him cold again.

Imagine if in one lifetime he’s a revolutionary. The figurehead of a rebellion he’s watched building for decades. Dancing amidst the same mistakes of a hundred lifetimes of the same pattern. This time certain that because he’s not doing it for himself he might survive. Taking comfort in the knowledge that he’s trying to protect countless other from doing the same thing as he does in every lifetime. In this lifetime his wax is the people’s belief, and the feathers are crafted of the things they’re fighting for. In this lifetime it’s not as surprising that he dies.

What if Icarus remembered every incarnation of himself, and hoping desperately for the one he doesn’t fall in. The General, the lover, the fool, the knight, the revolutionary. The same mistakes repeating in every life. Every version of him flying on wings that keep melting. (The boy burns with unavoidable tragedy.)

Imagine if millennia after he first takes flight he’s in the sky again. Flying, and watching people pass by underneath him. But this time instead of having wings crafted of wax or ideals they’re made of metal and bolts. And he doesn’t have to fear that he’ll fly too high because this time the wings will catch him. For once he doesn’t worry that the sun will catch up with him. Or that he’ll fall for them because he knows even if he does it won’t mean death. Imagine if for the first time in a thousand different lifetimes Icarus doesn’t fear the inevitable fall, or believe that he’s a tragedy. (What if all it took was to go beyond the sun?)


	12. Come One, Come All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Freak' the stands cry out. 'Stand trial in front of a jury of devils!'

Historians drained the sea last night.  
And dug up from somewhere beneath the silt  
Was a boy with burn marks running up and down his arms,  
Feathers crusted with salt and fire  
And he spoke with waterlogged lungs in an ancient language

To commemorate the discovery they placed him in a cage  
And watched as people came and gawked and whispered about hubris  
And children plucked the remaining feathers from his wings  
To act as a trophy and a reminder to not fly too high else they end up like him

When I went to see the boy who touched the sun  
I sat and listened to him desperately trying to explain  
To people who didn’t understand what he said  
Who didn’t want to know what he said so they didn’t try

Society calls it a representation of his faults  
And a punishment befitting the crime  
Because a man who flew wanted attention obviously  
(They forget he spent a lifetime locked up, that maybe he just wanted freedom)

“Ambition,” I whisper “you were ambitious”  
His cracked lips from around the words and I hear a whisper of “I was ambitious.”  
Society mocks him for daring to correct them, for daring to challenge the status quo  
And his desire to be more because now he’s nothing but a caged animal

Slowly others join me and in questioning the truth  
We learn how the story actually goes.  
A boy grows up trapped before being offered a way out- he takes it.  
A boy with wings wants everything he couldn’t have so he flies higher and higher

A boy with wings and a taste for the sun gets told don’t fly too low  
So he doesn’t, instead he goes up in an attempt to swallow the sun whole  
And when the wax begins to melt he laughs and  
Opens his arms to the sea (he knew the risks, don’t let them say he didn’t.)

The circus packs up his cage the next day  
Clasps the chains on his ankles and tells everyone he’s being moved somewhere else  
And the cover his wings in brightly coloured plastic plumage  
To make him an attraction to anyone who sees him.

The others and I follow the path the circus travels  
Questioning and asking and telling the truth  
We teach him words and as the salt is rubbed away  
And the circus wants to cut out his tongue because he speaks about their evils

Icarus, Icarus, Icarus the stands whisper  
And the sound carries across the continents  
And then the news crews come  
And people can’t laugh when the object of their horror is condemning them

And when the footage airs, the circus is swarmed with people  
People talking to him like a person  
And the burden name was allowed to be light again  
And for the first time in three thousand years his lungs were full of air once more

Washed and clothed and made whole  
The world watches with baited breath as a new set of wings is forged  
The world watches with baited breath as he steps up to the cliff face  
And for the first time in three millennium, he flies.


	13. Infinity Calling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think that I was meant for this.

I think that I was meant to fly  
The sky was clear and I was on the edge of  
In  
fin  
ity  
Feel the air rush by  
Keep climbing higher, you’re so close to everything

I think that I was meant to fall.  
Flying or falling, it’s all the same  
There is a brief second of immortality  
Before it all comes  
Cra  
sh  
ing  
down

I think that this was my triumph.  
Strap the wings onto your chest  
And leap off the building  
Tell the world everything  
Tell them how you  
F l e w.


End file.
